DEPT. OF UH...WHA?

The headline says it all:

Bush Honors 3 Ex-Officials Instrumental to Iraq Policy

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom today to three men who he said had "made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty": Gen. Tommy R. Franks, George J. Tenet and L. Paul Bremer III.

General Franks, now retired, led American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Tenet headed the Central Intelligence Agency from 1997 until last year. Mr. Bremer was the civilian administrator in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Coming up next in Bizarro World: The U.S. Aeronautical Society Honors Pilots of the Hindenburg, Jayson Blair receives a Pulitzer, and Ann Coulter converts to Islam.

UPDATE: There's a rumor going around that that these particular medals of freedom bear a fine print on the reverse side: "May be recalled if and when the owner writes a book."

At least that's what my assistant claims.

UPDATE: Here's David Frum, his prose straining under the weight of all the water it's carrying:

These medals have provoked derision from critics who scoff that the president's Iraq policy isn't going very well and that rewards are premature or wholly misplaced.

But the president is doing something important. He is declaring to the officials and soldiers who are executing this policies that he will stand behind them when things get tough; that he won't go seeking scapegoats; that he fully, strongly, and publicly supports the individuals he himself chose to carry out the tasks he himself assigned. There's a lot of loose talk about President Bush's demands for loyalty. One thing that critics of this president have never grasped is that he has been unprecedentedly successful in claiming loyalty up because he is unprecedentedly committed to loyalty down.

No response from Frum to the idea that these rewards are premature or wholly misplaced, because, of course, this all has nothing whatever to do with whether or not any of these three men sufficiently fulfilled the tasks appointed them, it's about their loyalty to the president and the president's loyalty to them. So in this case the country's highest civilian honor serves as sort of a gold retirement watch.

And who needs scapegoats when you refuse to admit that anything at all has gone wrong?

It's a wonder that Frum's laptop doesn't literally burst into flames as he taps this stuff out.